I would imagine that most people who want 7TB are wanting to archive tons and tons of shows on their TiVo for potential re-viewing years later.

Seems like a poor approach to me. Add an external esata drive to the TiVo and if EITHER drive has a problem you will lose all of those recordings. Better to offload them to a NAS or something similar of archiving is your thing.

I agree, the only hard drive issue I have ever had on my Tivo's was the ESATA external drive on my S3. It worked for about and month and then went wonky. I had to disconnect the external drive and of course I ended up loosing all my data, but the base TiVo came right back up.

I then pulled the 1TB drive out of the ESATA case and placed it into my Media server and it has been banging away for years.

I will never do that again. Too many points of failure, and if you do have a problem - you will loose everything on both drives.

I installed a WD Red drive in my Roamio Basic and did not have to run wdidle3 - hopefully it's no longer an issue with TiVo's, but I don't think anybody has done testing to confirm yet.

I know this is fairly old now, but with a WD Red you shouldn't have to use wdidle. The Reds already are setup to not power down, just like the AV drives.

The Red and AV drives should be fairly similar in firmware - Reds are NAS optimized, where they will almost immediately return an error on a sector and mark it bad rather than trying to recover it and possibly falling out of the array they are in. I would imagine that the AV drives would have similar behavior - most people would rather have a small macroblock / bit error in a recording than have the drive hang up for 1-2 minutes trying to retry a read or write.

To the poster who had a 3TB Red and ran into problems, I'd be willing to bet you just had a bad drive... would've been worth trying WD Diags on it before sending it back.

Swapped in a 3tb drive to my plus last night. I had already set it up using the 1 tb drive it came with, and I noticed that while I had to rerun guided setup and all that, my selections in "My Video Providers" persisted... interesting. And I didn't need to relogin to amazon or rhapsody. I also posted last week when I got the plus that I had a couple reboots within an hour or 2 of setting it up. Went the whole week since then without any. Then after putting the new drive in, I got a couple more. But it's been ok since that initial period, again.

Does anyone know if you can just swap out already setup HD's and if they would still work fine?

Say I had a 2TB HD installed and working fine, then I installed a 3TB HD and it was working fine.

Can I just swap them out now and then with no problems or would it try to format and erase them????

It seems to do a check and if the software is already installed it does not re-format the drive, at least from what people have posted about over this enormous thread.

I can see things which could cause problems with this, but in theory it would work.... as to why someone would wish to do such a thing is another matter entirely.... also keep in mind that the more esoteric things people do and the inevitable support calls to TiVo that will follow are the #1 reason that this capability gets scrapped in a future software update.

It seems to do a check and if the software is already installed it does not re-format the drive, at least from what people have posted about over this enormous thread.

I can see things which could cause problems with this, but in theory it would work.... as to why someone would wish to do such a thing is another matter entirely.... also keep in mind that the more esoteric things people do and the inevitable support calls to TiVo that will follow are the #1 reason that this capability gets scrapped in a future software update.

I tend to agree, if people are messing with their TiVos they should come here for support and not call TiVo.

Given the speed and ease of off loading shows to my computer and pulling them back I don't think I am even going to bother upgrading the 500GB drive it is just to easy to use out of the TiVo storage now. I had actually thought about not upgrade the Premiere but it was still slow enough that I didn't like dealing with transfers the Roamio is so fast I can start a transfer from my computer, start watching it and still skip through all the commercials and never catch up with the transfer.

Being OTA all my shows are transferable so I have no issue doing transfers, but I do understand that cable people could have transfer restrictions so I would think an upgrade would still be worth it for cable people.

Have a Roamio Plus + 3TB drive coming tomorrow. Is the recommendation to power up the Roamio first before upgrading the hard drive? Is it safe to power up, pull the plug to avoid setup and proceed with upgrade?

Have a Roamio Plus + 3TB drive coming tomorrow. Is the recommendation to power up the Roamio first before upgrading the hard drive? Is it safe to power up, pull the plug to avoid setup and proceed with upgrade?

Thanks!

It does not matter how you do it as long as you have no power to the TiVo when your open the unit up, but you will a lot of advice now.

That's what I did. If something goes wrong you can always put the stock drive back in to see if there's something wrong with the unit or not.

yup. my stock drive has never been booted and frankly there is not going to be an occasion where it ever sees the inside of a tivo or anything else in my house. Its too small for a tivo roamio 6 tuner situation. its too slow as a system PC drive and too small really for a Raid storage situation.

I know this is fairly old now, but with a WD Red you shouldn't have to use wdidle. The Reds already are setup to not power down, just like the AV drives.

The Red and AV drives should be fairly similar in firmware - Reds are NAS optimized, where they will almost immediately return an error on a sector and mark it bad rather than trying to recover it and possibly falling out of the array they are in. I would imagine that the AV drives would have similar behavior - most people would rather have a small macroblock / bit error in a recording than have the drive hang up for 1-2 minutes trying to retry a read or write.

To the poster who had a 3TB Red and ran into problems, I'd be willing to bet you just had a bad drive... would've been worth trying WD Diags on it before sending it back.

Please find my previous thread discussing the differences between a Green drive and an AV drive. Error detection and correction is constantly occurring, but the hard drive never reports the error to the OS unless it's not correctable. You also have to use the special ATA streaming commands to invoke the behavior you're talking about. We don't know if Tivo has done this or not. But WD is actively advertising those commands in the Red drives.

You're right in that the Red's firmware is similar to the AV drive's firmware. As with the Green. The Red drive is spinning faster, drawing more power, is probably louder, and is hotter. But there are few differences between the lines.

Also note that those SMART tests are dumb, and only detect around half of failing hard drives. There was a concerned effort to fix this, but based on my recent experience with a failing hard drive they still have a long way to go.

Please find my previous thread discussing the differences between a Green drive and an AV drive. Error detection and correction is constantly occurring, but the hard drive never reports the error to the OS unless it's not correctable. You also have to use the special ATA streaming commands to invoke the behavior you're talking about. We don't know if Tivo has done this or not. But WD is actively advertising those commands in the Red drives.

You're right in that the Red's firmware is similar to the AV drive's firmware. As with the Green. The Red drive is spinning faster, drawing more power, is probably louder, and is hotter. But there are few differences between the lines.

Also note that those SMART tests are dumb, and only detect around half of failing hard drives. There was a concerned effort to fix this, but based on my recent experience with a failing hard drive they still have a long way to go.

I have a feeling hotter is not better when it comes to Roamio. I put a Seagate 3TB 7200 RPM drive in in my roamio and after about 15min it was vary warm.
I pulled it out not worth testing to PSU and the heat syncs
to see how much heat it can stand.

Also you say the red drive spins faster but all I can find is that is has IntelliPower listed for RPM speed. Maybe I missed it. But what speed does it spin at?

Please find my previous thread discussing the differences between a Green drive and an AV drive. Error detection and correction is constantly occurring, but the hard drive never reports the error to the OS unless it's not correctable. You also have to use the special ATA streaming commands to invoke the behavior you're talking about. We don't know if Tivo has done this or not. But WD is actively advertising those commands in the Red drives.

You're right in that the Red's firmware is similar to the AV drive's firmware. As with the Green. The Red drive is spinning faster, drawing more power, is probably louder, and is hotter. But there are few differences between the lines.

Also note that those SMART tests are dumb, and only detect around half of failing hard drives. There was a concerned effort to fix this, but based on my recent experience with a failing hard drive they still have a long way to go.

FWIW, the last AV drive I bought was probably 2 years ago. The 3TB Red drive I put in my Roamio Basic is quieter than the 3TB AV drive in the TiVoHD it replaced. I can't hear the Red drive seeking even with my ear against the vent on that side of the Roamio. I can hear the TiVoHD seek from a couple of feet away. It's quiet, and has never bothered me, but the Red drive is as silent a hard drive as I've ever heard...or not heard

I did check TiVo's report of MB temps before/after the upgrade, and they haven't changed - 42-44C. The Roamio Basic case is small, and you can easily feel the heat of the HDD through the plastic top, but so far this one doesn't appear to run hotter than the stock Seagate drive it replaced.

I wondered if my cheapness would come back to bite me, but so far so good (got the Red drive for about $25 less than an AV drive with a Newegg coupon.)
If the price is the same, I'd go with an AV drive, but so far I'm happy with the cost savings.

I have a feeling hotter is not better when it comes to Roamio. I put a Seagate 3TB 7200 RPM drive in in my roamio and after about 15min it was vary warm.
I pulled it out not worth testing to PSU and the heat syncs
to see how much heat it can stand.

Also you say the red drive spins faster but all I can find is that is has IntelliPower listed for RPM speed. Maybe I missed it. But what speed does it spin at?

Hard drives thrive in the heat, up to around 60 C or so. Then their reliability falls off sharply. So "felt very warm" doesn't mean much.

If they list "IntelliPower", for the Red then I'm mistaken. It's a low RPM drive that has the same speed, power, and heat as a Green drive. This made me look at the spec. sheets for the Red vs. Green, and I don't see any difference except the 3 yr. warranty on the Red vs. the 2 on the Green. I'm shocked that they'd recommend the Red for RAID use, as RAID users typically go for extra performance vs. the data redundancy and they wouldn't usually settle for a low RPM drive. But it's all marketing drivel anyway.

"IntelliPower" doesn't mean variable speed -- it means fixed speed (5400 rpm) but the actual throughput is sometimes higher than a "typical" 5400 RPM drive. Since all drives support NCQ, of course when you use that you'll get bursts of higher throughput.

Hard drives thrive in the heat, up to around 60 C or so. Then their reliability falls off sharply. So "felt very warm" doesn't mean much.

If they list "IntelliPower", for the Red then I'm mistaken. It's a low RPM drive that has the same speed, power, and heat as a Green drive. This made me look at the spec. sheets for the Red vs. Green, and I don't see any difference except the 3 yr. warranty on the Red vs. the 2 on the Green. I'm shocked that they'd recommend the Red for RAID use, as RAID users typically go for extra performance vs. the data redundancy and they wouldn't usually settle for a low RPM drive. But it's all marketing drivel anyway.

"IntelliPower" doesn't mean variable speed -- it means fixed speed (5400 rpm) but the actual throughput is sometimes higher than a "typical" 5400 RPM drive. Since all drives support NCQ, of course when you use that you'll get bursts of higher throughput.

Ok thanks I had a feeling it was slower and yes most drives do spin better with some heat but it's the Roamio PSU that worries me. I have had to replace a few PSU's in my S3's and that's not a bad thing both my S3's are over 9years old I got my money's worth and then some

PS
yes it is all marketing Green/Black/red you pick the color and they charge you more

Ok thanks I had a feeling it was slower and yes most drives do spin better with some heat but it's the Roamio PSU that worries me. I have had to replace a few PSU's in my S3's and that's not a bad thing both my S3's are over 9years old I got my money's worth and then some

PS
yes it is all marketing Green/Black/red you pick the color and they charge you more

That is not entirely true as they all have different firmware and that firmware or drive profiles that are optimized for a particular environment.

That is not entirely true as they all have different firmware and that firmware or drive profiles that are optimized for a particular environment.

It was more of a general concept that I was speaking too. But in theory most of the drives in one model type or another are the same. Be it Green/Black/red Most Green drives leave the factory with the same firmware at that time and then new firmware comes out. And yes a (drive profile) will have the best firmware at that time for the drive performance or environment. I hope I make sense

But a bigger question is it better to TAX a drive performance with NCQ if the OS or the system it's going in does not support it. Why buy a drive with NCQ and the drive working that much harder

Does Tivo support NCQ? I know the drive can do it if it has the right firmware.

The source code says it does. But if the Tivo encounters too many errors (or specific types of errors) it disables it. It can also slow down the transfer speed or switch from DMA to PIO mode if needed.

From libata-eh.c

The followings are speed down rules. #1 and #2 deal with
* DUBIOUS errors.
*
* 1. If more than one DUBIOUS_ATA_BUS or DUBIOUS_TOUT_HSM errors
* occurred during last 5 mins, SPEED_DOWN and FALLBACK_TO_PIO.
*
* 2. If more than one DUBIOUS_TOUT_HSM or DUBIOUS_UNK_DEV errors
* occurred during last 5 mins, NCQ_OFF.
*
* 3. If more than 8 ATA_BUS, TOUT_HSM or UNK_DEV errors
* ocurred during last 5 mins, FALLBACK_TO_PIO
*
* 4. If more than 3 TOUT_HSM or UNK_DEV errors occurred
* during last 10 mins, NCQ_OFF.
*
* 5. If more than 3 ATA_BUS or TOUT_HSM errors, or more than 6
* UNK_DEV errors occurred during last 10 mins, SPEED_DOWN.
*

I don't see any error handling for the media streaming features, but I'll take a second look later.

The source code says it does. But if the Tivo encounters too many errors (or specific types of errors) it disables it. It can also slow down the transfer speed or switch from DMA to PIO mode if needed.

From libata-eh.c

The followings are speed down rules. #1 and #2 deal with
* DUBIOUS errors.
*
* 1. If more than one DUBIOUS_ATA_BUS or DUBIOUS_TOUT_HSM errors
* occurred during last 5 mins, SPEED_DOWN and FALLBACK_TO_PIO.
*
* 2. If more than one DUBIOUS_TOUT_HSM or DUBIOUS_UNK_DEV errors
* occurred during last 5 mins, NCQ_OFF.
*
* 3. If more than 8 ATA_BUS, TOUT_HSM or UNK_DEV errors
* ocurred during last 5 mins, FALLBACK_TO_PIO
*
* 4. If more than 3 TOUT_HSM or UNK_DEV errors occurred
* during last 10 mins, NCQ_OFF.
*
* 5. If more than 3 ATA_BUS or TOUT_HSM errors, or more than 6
* UNK_DEV errors occurred during last 10 mins, SPEED_DOWN.
*

I don't see any error handling for the media streaming features, but I'll take a second look later.

I installed a 3TB Seagate NAS drive in the Roamio Plus on Monday. It's been fine so far. Much cooler and quieter than the 7200RPM drive. I've been using 8 4TB Seagate NAS drive in my Synology DS1813+ for WMC iSCSI recording. I'm enjoying the just works simplicity of TiVo though.

Edit: I installed the 3TB Seagate NAS drive right out of the box without powering on.

I should say the kernel fully supports NCQ. The kernel does not support the Broadcom chip directly, and I don't know if there's a separate SATA controller or if Tivo is using the one native to the Broadcom chip. Without knowing that, I can't tell if NCQ is in use. It SHOULD be in use based on what I've seen.

I don't see the streaming commands. They were not supported in the kernel. Maybe the MFS code in usr has them, and I suppose you could implement them that way, but that's provided in compressed binary and I can't tell.

Any idea on the 4TB internal upgrade? Weakness has them up for sale since the 13th. I have a 4TB drive but when it says something is wrong with the drive and to hit select to format it, it'll restart and I'll get that option again...

Any idea on the 4TB internal upgrade? Weakness has them up for sale since the 13th. I have a 4TB drive but when it says something is wrong with the drive and to hit select to format it, it'll restart and I'll get that option again...

Doh.

Any ideas how he got it to work?

Why don't you email and ask him? Obviously by figuring this out first they are trying to earn a profit and who can blame them?

I imagine that at some point someone else will figure it out and MFSTools, etc, will have the capability to "prep" a 4TB drive but I am skeptical that you will ever be able to simply pop it into the current Roamio generation and have it automatically format.

Why don't you email and ask him? Obviously by figuring this out first they are trying to earn a profit and who can blame them?

I imagine that at some point someone else will figure it out and MFSTools, etc, will have the capability to "prep" a 4TB drive but I am skeptical that you will ever be able to simply pop it into the current Roamio generation and have it automatically format.

I agree. I think the first step for all of the tool authors is understanding the current APM 3TB partition on the Pro and using that to understand how the APM 4TB partition table should be formatted. Right now, Weaknees has a strong incentive to provide higher capacity storage options.

Based on his findings, I believe ggieseke was good on the understanding but needed time to rewrite the DvrBARS tool to support it.